I would like to continue to remind you that, while there is nothing graphic, there are some unsavoury topics covered throughout this story. These themes include: rape, mass murder, terrorism, paedophilia, bestiality, cannibalism, necrophilia, incest.
Thank you for still taking time out of your day to read this, let alone those who go as far as actually commenting, it's very kind of you.
...
Harry had always been prone to maudlin in the autumn. The time surrounding Hallowe'en was particularly hard. The way the days grew shorter and the nights longer, coating everything in a permanent state of darkness affected some people, drawing their moods downwards. Dark thoughts seemed more natural during long, dark nights. The way the weather became more grey and gloomy, the coldness of the coming winter seeping into his very bones. Even knowing that dawn would break just as surely as spring would eventually come, couldn't alleviate the melancholy he felt.
There was more to it, than just the weather. Autumn had its place in the seasons, just as night had its place in the day. But Hallowe'en for Harry was an anniversary, the anniversary of the night his mother had been murdered by Voldemort. The anniversary of the night he had been orphaned and left on the Dursley's doorstep. The anniversary of the night that Voldemort had marked him, singled him out and ensured he would never lead a normal life. It was a solitary sorrow, one that no one else in the world could truly understand, though there were moments when he thought Severus must at least share his grief in some manner. He could still remember the fleeting impressions of that Hallowe'en night, the echoing words, "Stand aside you foolish girl," filling his dreams as the nights darkened.
Of course, the whole world outside his head was indifferent and entirely ignorant of the significance the season held for him. He couldn't blame them for that. To the wizarding world, Hallowe'en had been a night for celebration. Not only was it a night with magical significance for a great number of rites, but it was the night when Harry had been anointed and as such was a cause for celebration for many, especially those that gathered at Hogwarts. To the modern muggle world it was just a silly holiday for embracing the gothic. Skeletons and ghosts, witches and wizards, all sorts of spooky decorations were available everywhere and displayed cheerfully. Harry hated shopping in October, hated the reminder, the relief once it was over and the decorations changed was immeasurable. The magical aspect only served to heighten what he'd lost, and at the same time forcing him to face the truth. He hadn't lost his magic, he had consciously made the decision and performed the act that not only tore away his own magic but did the same to everyone. So many, a countless number he could never bear to consider counting, were presumably buried, their bones deep beneath the earth in the spots where magic had swallowed the buildings bound by spells. It brought back the grief of the consequences of the final battle, just as much as it brought back the grief of his parents' deaths. It brought back his grievances of the fate that had directed his life, as well as the bitter knowledge that he hadn't truly been an innocent victim.
It was easy here, though. Much easier than it had been for a long time. The house was isolated and none of the occupants had much interest in socialising outside of the small group of survivors. No decorations had gone up. The only hint of decoration that could be mistaken for anything to do with Hallowe'en were the black paper bats that covered the walls and ceiling of Severus's room, but they were there all year round. They were Luna's handiwork, though Harry had no idea if she'd asked Severus if he wanted his room covered in paper bats. In a way, Harry imagined that he would simply shrug and point out in his maddeningly matter-of-fact manner that it wasn't like he could see them. The bats hadn't been made specifically for the room, but rather for Draco and Hermione's wedding years ago. Harry assumed that they hadn't at any point requested large cardboard bats to be used as confetti, but Luna had devoted a considerable amount of time and effort to cutting them out. She had poured her whole being into it, and it had seemed to bring her a degree of lucidity that had been lacking.
The wedding had been a quiet affair. Harry had been back in the country, briefly. He had attended, one of the very few guests. Neither of them had family remaining that they could invite, and the need to explain why they had no relatives was a reason that prevented them making other friends that might have been invited. As it was, neither of them had intended for it to be anything more than a simple signing of documents. That was in many ways a relief, as a more elaborate or planned wedding would presumably have struggled to include Luna's black paper bats. Being of thin cardboard rather than confetti paper, they hadn't drifted downwards in a particularly romantic manner. Harry had, like all the scarce guests, helped with throwing them over the couple. For any other wedding he might have thought of them as the happy couple, but it wasn't a happy wedding. It wasn't a sad wedding. It just was, much in the same way that Draco and Hermione just were. Afterwards, Luna had carefully scurried round carefully salvaging the bats to take home.
Harry rather liked that they had found a new home on Severus's walls. It added atmosphere to the room. It was definitely unique, which he felt suited Severus to a T. He might look and seem far more normal now, almost human, but Harry would never be able to shake his early impressions. He knew, beneath the surface, Severus was still the same person. It had just always been buried very deep down. For many years he had hidden himself with a fluttering cloak of bats, now his oddities lay hidden behind a relaxed air of normality. It seemed to Harry that he cared now for a select few people, an increase on the sparse list it had once been, but as always he had no interest in anyone outside of that tiny circle. No one else would ever find their way into knowing him as he truly was, a secret Harry doubted he himself even knew the whole of.
Aside from the bats, Severus's room was sparsely decorated. He had never had much interest in his environment, and that had not changed with the years. Colour had always meant nothing to him. Everything was organised for practicality, with an element of comfort considered. From what Harry could tell, the room was more geared towards comfort than the rooms he had remembered Severus occupying in Hogwarts. The times had changed, the situation was different. They were all older and living in peace now. Each day continued as the last, time moving forward in a slow and abstract manner, days and dates blending into each other. The sun rose and set. At times Harry could almost forget that the world outside their little bubble even existed. They still had to go shopping occasionally, to buy food mostly, but even that was a rare trip into society. Ginny tended to order things online anyway, further reducing any human interaction, though Harry was becoming familiar with the various locals from whom Luna tended to acquire a wide variety of things from duck eggs to honey on her regular walks around the hills.
The whole house smelt glorious. It often did smell of something delicious or homely, rich and complex aromas drifting through the rooms and permeating the atmosphere with a calm warmth. Now that it was autumn Ginny no longer baked her cakes for the teashop in the village, so she and Severus had switched over to making soaps and shampoos seamlessly as they did every year. Those were also sold in the village shops, as well as through the small website Ginny curated. Despite the weather, Luna still went out most days. Some days she returned home soaked to the skin and shivering. When the weather was good, Harry joined the others in a walk after lunch, familiarising himself once more with the bleakly beautiful slopes of the hills and the rich scents of nature. Mostly, Harry sat in the kitchen at the table, his laptop open as Severus and Ginny mixed their herbs, spices and other ingredients. He was sensible enough to know it was best not to help. He just enjoyed the calm comfort of being in the same space as them, watching them work together. He had always enjoyed watching Severus brew potions, years ago in a time and place that seemed to be a life that belonged to another person. Ginny had sent him a number of their products over the years, whenever he'd had a permanent address, and the scents had always transported him back to better times in his mind.
So around him they had performed acts that may as well be magic to Harry, complicated recipes made by Severus's intuition and Ginny's precision. He'd never seen Severus measure anything, and had always assumed it to be simply one of his many magical talents, but now he was changing that assumption to the realisation that it must be an innate talent beyond magic. Now, however, he no longer handled the more dangerous or delicate ingredients, mixing instead the scents. Harry, who would always admit that in many ways he hadn't applied himself to his studies as much as he maybe should have during his time at Hogwarts, had never been good at remembering the properties of herbs or any kind of ingredients. All he knew was that clearly some of the ingredients he had assumed to be aesthetic had some properties that transcended magic, as Severus and Ginny continued to use them to great effect.
It was a pleasant background hum as he translated, a freelance job that he was doing at least temporarily. He had enough contacts to get work. Whether or not he would continue he didn't know yet, merely that it was convenient. He had rather enjoyed teaching, though it had also made him marvel at times at Severus's patience, but he wasn't sure if it was practical here in the middle of nowhere. He also doubted he had the correct qualifications or skills for British laws. Maybe allowing himself to be secluded away from the rest of society, seeing few other people and working alone through his laptop was not ideal, but for Harry in the here and now it was acceptable. It meant at least that he could avoid any unnecessary exposure to Hallowe'en, which was difficult when teaching children.
Once the mixing was finished, they joined him at the table, waiting first for the kettle to boil and then for the tea to brew. Almost as if summoned by the click of the kettle, Luna materialised bearing an assortment of fireworks and straw that she spilt over the table in favour of holding a delicate Studio Ghibli mug full of tea. Harry had given her the mug years ago, carefully wrapping it up and posting it to her. That it was clearly her favourite mug touched his heart and made him glad. He still made an effort to never make any sudden moves or raise his voice near her, and was always careful to give her as much space as she needed. She was relaxing into his presence more and more, though she did still prefer to keep the table between them whenever they sat down together.
Rather than Hallowe'en, it was Bonfire Night that was the focus here. For Harry it brought back old, forgotten memories of his childhood before Hogwarts. He remembered, vaguely, Uncle Vernon teaching him and Dudley very sternly about checking bonfires for hedgehogs, as well as standing in their garden wrapped in a warm coat and woolly hat as the fire licked at the crackling branches of their bonfire. He remembered the firework show at the castle, and the way that he'd hated the loud bangs so much that Petunia had carried him home early, leaving Vernon and Dudley to watch without them. He became used to loud noises and explosions during the war.
"We're going to blow up Parliament," Luna said cheerfully, a hoarse sing-song of a voice, fiddling with the fireworks in a way that worried Harry slightly. She was arranging them into an order that didn't make sense to Harry, but as long as it did to Luna no one seemed to mind.
"Yes," Severus agreed, in a manner that Harry did not find particularly reassuring. He assumed that they were just going to set off the fireworks in the dark hillside, but a small part of him wouldn't put it part them to be intending to actually drive down to London as part of some deadly plot. It wasn't like they didn't know perfectly well how to make explosives, or indeed how best to deploy them. All three of Severus, Luna and Ginny had all been erratic and unpredictable in their own way during the war. Peace had not really change that.
"We'll burn everyone who ever hurt us," Ginny added, taking the straw that Luna had brought in with the fireworks and twisting it in her hands. Realistically, Harry knew that most people on that list were already dead. The only person he could think of off the top of his head who had hurt them and was still available for burning was him, but he assumed that she was talking metaphorically. He closed his laptop, finally abandoning his translation for the day, preferring instead to watch Ginny twist and tie the straw, realising that she was slowly shaping rough human figures to create a vague approximation of dolls. He assumed that they were to act as human effigies, to be burnt symbolically.
His concentration had drifted long before the kitchen filled with life, so he was glad to turn away from his screen. He'd been distracting himself from his work by reading news articles, all on the same topic, which he was glad to be torn from. They were merely making him sad, though despite the sorrow and horror he still felt a need to keep reading ever more. He should be numb to death and suffering, but he wasn't. Some days he was grateful that he could still feel. He was grateful to be surrounded by warmth and the living, even if they were all ghosts in their own way. Their bones were wrapt with still living flesh, and they continued onwards. He watched the dolls becoming more recognisable, mementos of a bitter past. In that way none of them were living for the future, caught up in the effects of their yesterdays.
"Still?" he asked her, a futile question he already knew the answer to. It was clear as it always had been, the evidence held in her hands. The faces were crude, but Harry knew as he would have known had they had no faces. Maybe had he known less he might have struggled to guess, but he had lived through her history to an extent, seeing glimpses of her life from the sidelines much as she had observed his. For a moment her expression was a hard one he had almost forgotten, and Harry was reminded that behind the rustic smiles there was a woman who had been a Death Eater. Even without seeing it, he knew that the Mark was still etched deep into her skin.
"I rebuilt myself," she started slowly, the whole kitchen unnaturally silent to catch her quiet words, "I rebuilt myself from the shattered, mangled remains of who I used to be. Twice. Twice I picked myself up from as good as dead, twice I removed all the traces of who I had been and recreated myself in a different image. Twice I survived,"
She wasn't looking at anyone, her eyes unfocused and staring past the effigy in her hands into a memory none of them could see. Harry knew that it was of Hogwarts, though he wasn't sure of the exact details. As he watched her face, full of melancholy, he remembered the way she had smiled with innocent delight the first time they'd met on the train platform. But more than that, he remembered the girl he'd found in the Chamber of Secrets. He liked to forget everything he'd seen there. He'd had a few nightmares, but eventually he'd been able to put it from his mind. As a child he had never given any thought to the fact that Ginny would likely have found it harder to recover, never wanting to give any deeper consideration to the Chamber and all of it's secrets, leaving them to rot in the bowels of the castle instead.
Now his skin crawled at the memory, resurfacing and rearing it's ugly head with a vengeance. It had been the smell that had lingered the longest. From the moment he had managed to open the Chamber of Secrets to the moment he had finally stripped off all his clothes and bathed after escaping its confines, the stench of rotting flesh had surrounded him. The few hours he had spent trekking through the sewers to where he had found Ginny before dragging her back through them to comparative freedom had been far longer than he would ever have wanted to spend breathing in the noxious smell. He had washed himself and his hair excessively afterwards and his clothes had been burnt, which had allowed him to finally feel free of it's lingering presence. Now, his mind already in the past, he distractedly wondered how long it had taken Ginny to finally feel clean. He wondered if she ever had. Given the way the smell had seemed to penetrate everything in his brief foray into the tangled passages, her endless days buried amongst the dead must have haunted her for longer.
She had been covered in blood and slime when he helped her from the Chamber of Secrets, pulling her naked from where he had found her, curled up in the rotting corpse of the basilisk. He had never questioned what she had eaten or drunk in her time there, deciding once again that he would rather not know for certain. It was one of the many things he had realised he preferred to remain ignorant about. If he thought hard he knew that in his heart of hearts he undoubtably knew so many of the answers, but he refrained, all the while wondering if that was a selfish decision.
The room drifted back to a comfortable silence, broken eventually by mundane, day-to-day conversation. The memories were left in the past, still haunting their present but laid to rest for the moment. The dolls were completed and the tea drunk. Slowly night fell, the darkness creeping after the sun set the sky alight with a blood-red dying blaze. They ate a light meal in the cozy warmth of the kitchen, a warmth that was more than just the temperature.
Together they walked up the garden, wrapped in warm clothes. Harry wore a woolly hat and a scarf. The cold often irritated his scar, so he liked to keep it protected from the chill as much as he could. Luna wore fluffy mauve earmuffs with cat ears, a present from Harry. She was probably too old in most people's minds to wear such silly earmuffs, but Harry thought they suited her. Luna had never cared much for the opinions of society, and now that she rarely ventured out into public beyond the safety of the hills of the village there was no reason for her not to enjoy herself.
Severus and Ginny both seemed to be unconcerned with the evening chill. Severus seemed more human now that he had before, an effect that Harry was sure was in part due to the lack of bats and in part due to the fact that he was now older. Yet he was still far from normal in many ways. The entirety of Harry's time as his student, Severus had always worn the same clothing no matter the weather, seemingly unbothered by any change in temperature. Now he did change his clothes visibly, and as the weather had cooled he had taken to wearing jumpers. But still it seemed to affect him less than it did either Harry or Luna. Ginny he had always assumed had picked up the resistance to the weather from her lengthy time as Severus's disciple, though he could not understand how something he had always assumed to be a magical affection had survived the loss of magic. Maybe Ginny too had always been relatively unaffected by the temperature, he had after all barely known her as a child.
Luna lit the newspaper with matches, and Harry watched as the fire took to the branches of the bonfire, building up in orange flames. Their light and heat, flickering and crackling before his eyes, transported him briefly to the Forbidden Forest as it burnt. Luna hadn't needed matches or kindling then. Dark shadows played across her face, cast by the bonfire as she gazed into the bright heat. The rich aroma of smoke filled Harry's lungs, scratching at his throat and making him cough a little. They'd all smell of bonfire, their clothes and bodies needing a wash, but for that moment Harry let himself forget the bad and indulge in the good.
Maybe it was because Luna had lit the bonfire, or that it was England, Harry didn't know, but it brought back memories that fire hadn't inspired in him for many years. Some were of cozy nights from his childhood. Some were watching his comrades burn to cinders. He wondered what Luna was thinking as she watched the flames licking the logs, caressing their way through the fuel. Her expression seemed sad, though not explicitly so. Pensive and resigned, as if she had made peace with the fire without ever fully forgiving it.
She thew a small amount of what Harry assumed was turpentine on the flames, making them flare up hungrily, ensuring that they grew to a proper bonfire. Harry couldn't help but flinch slightly at the suddenness, the sharp burst of fire filling his senses and for a second the trees behind the flames looked like the ones from his past rather than his present. The vibrant light of the fire glowed bright amongst the darkness of the evening, casting flickering hues of molten gold over the faces that were so dearly familiar to him. The house was isolated, far from any great metropolis, so the nights were a deep, untouched darkness. High in the sky, the stars were visible, millions of tiny sparks of light glowing in the empty blackness of the heavens above.
Those sparks were soon joined by bursts of colour as Ginny took the matches from Luna's grip and the fireworks one by one from Severus and Harry. Harry considered offering to help set them off, but he got the impression that his current position of holding the assorted fireworks and handing them over when required was adequate enough. He and Luna watched the small show Ginny gave them, both failing to restrain the slight jump at each explosion that showered the bright lights over their heads. Severus paid no attention to the proceedings, unable to see anything, just hearing the bangs like distant gunfire. The paltry display finished, they lit sparklers, with Severus once again paying no heed. Hesitantly, Harry found himself drawing ancient runes of protection, of healing and of love in the air. They meant nothing now, with no magic to back them up. Writing the kanji or even just the words would be as effective as the long dead runes now deprived of all their former power. Throughout all the sparklers, the bonfire continued to burn, growing from a small fire to a strong blaze that exuded glorious heat.
Once the bonfire was finally built to a good height, Ginny unceremoniously tossed the two straw dolls she had made into the flames. They tumbled in amongst the burning logs, catching fire. Harry found himself watching, almost vacantly, as they fell to pieces amongst the fire, losing track of time as he gazed blankly at the symbols of his past. He wondered absently if they made and burnt the same dolls every year. He had expected more ceremony, but in a way he felt that their treatment was fitting. In life they had both put a certain emphasis on ceremony, as all magic had, so maybe to deprive them of it was Ginny's ultimate revenge.
A life time could have passed as he watched the flames lick their remains, though it didn't. When he came back to himself, Severus seemed closer than he had before. Almost hidden by shadows, Ginny had an arm around Luna's shoulder, holding her close, red hair mingling with dirty blonde. Both of them were alive, despite everything, and for a moment Harry marvelled at that. His eyes stung with the smoke, the gentle wind regularly blowing it in his face as it changed direction. They stayed there, watching the fire slowly burn itself out. They were not unmoving or silent, conversation drifting softly amongst the smokey tendrils, the waning gibbous moon sailing high above them.
